Sunday, November 16, 2014

Part 1 - Dream high to York ~Pascasiswazah MARA~

Assalamuaikum..

As I told u before, i really would like to share how I ended up in York for this year. It was begun  with Pascasiswazah MARA 2014. I have never planned to further my MA as soon as this. By having a son and my husband is in the middle of studying his MA, I could never imagined to get this chance. But... yeah.. Allah is the great planner. It started with a friend who asked me to apply for this education loan by MARA. MARA offered a sponsorship for postgraduates who want to study abroad. It was opened in early Feb-end of Feb 2014. I asked my husband about it and he just said, why not your try. If it's ours, then it will be ours. InsyaAllah... then, I just tried and submit my application at the very last date of the closing date for application. Since I was not planning it, I had not decided what course I wanted to study or which university. Once again, my friend suggested to apply University of York. I was planning to choose either Sociolinguistics or Applied Linguistics. So, I made a little bit research and comparison between these two. Firstly, I wanted to apply for both but I will face difficulty with referees. Each course needs 2 academic referees, so, I have to contact my former lecturers for that. Since lecturers are of course busy, it would be difficult for them to prepare a few reference letters for me. Ya.. I can contact a few lecturers to do that for me but I have left university for about 4 years and as a result I could not find some lecturers' email in the university contact. Finally, I managed to contact 2 lecturers who were willing to lend me their hand. However, it was not an easy process, we really need to push our referees a little bit in a polite way.. hihi. As I mentioned, they are busy and sometimes they will forget to do that for us. So, be prepared for the worst and always think positive. There's no easy way to success.
Owh... I should tell about university application in the next entry. I should just focused about pascasiswazah MARA. Okeh... back to my sponsorship application; after two months (if i was not mistaken) MARA released a result for Psychometric Test. It was the first time where MARA conducted it online. It had about 100 questions (I am not sure) with multiple choice questions within 1 hour. The questions were very tricky and vary. What we should prepare? I think just nothing, you should think logically for each question. Perhaps, u can practice any Psychometric Test in the internet.
After the test, the candidates will have to attend an interview session. It was a group interview session of 10 candidates. The interview session was divided into 3 parts. First part: problem solution where we have been given a problem to solve and discuss in our group. Second part: creative and critical thinking; we have to build a bridge that can sustain the burden of a bottle of mineral water by newspaper and explain. Third part: individual part where we have to share our future research topic and research questions. 
Honestly, I felt terrible about this interview. Other candidates were so good and I didn't think I managed to do it well. I just felt ok, redha or let it go. Just went back to school and didn't look back.
Once again.. Alhamdullillah.. Allah is a great planner. I got it!!! Thanks to my husband, my son and my dearest family for their endless prayer. May Allah bless all of us.. (^_^)

Till see u again in the next entry. InsyaAllah.

Cheers,
ticer wawa

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